As the nights get cold
by Crimson Falcons
Summary: Post-war. So sacrifice yourself, and let me have what's left.
1. 1

**I'm really excited for this new one.**

**This is my response to Naruto: The Last. And the whole series really.**

**Just excuse the mistakes I might have missed.**

* * *

**1.**

**Chalk outline**

She remembers the feel of him under her fingertips, the way his warmth penetrated through her clothes and burned her skin. Blue eyes, vast as oceans and endless like the sky, always clouded, shrouded under a veil- he was always thinking, she laments, about what he wasn't able to accomplish.

His apartment is the same he left it- crumpled, messy. The air is stale, but not because of the spoilt food. Kakashi opens the windows and lets the light touch the carpet for the first time in weeks. It reminds her of how his skin glowed under the sun, eyes crinkling at the corners as he crunched on the dry grass of the training grounds, shadows playing on his face. His black jacket flying in the air. Blonde hair spiked beyond belief, smiling uninhibited. But his eyes- God, his eyes- how could she not have seen it? The way they would glaze over as he remembered the ghosts he had seen, the burdens he had to shoulder alone.

Ten years is a long time to chase a mirage. She should know.

They clean up as much as they can without disturbing the sanctity of this tomb. When they leave, she runs her eyes over it one more time, remembering, in remorse. The silent walls stare back as her, unabashed, maybe slightly accusing. This is an echo of what could have been something monumental, she thinks, closing the door after her. Something epic. Kakashi locks it, the keys dangling in his hands, the green frog seemingly frowning along with them. Outside, Konoha seeps into darkness, slowly and then all at once. The Hokage mountain looms over them, the faces etched in stone looking more so desolate under the harsh glares of the spotlights.

She ends up finding herself sitting on the bench that started it all.

* * *

Sometimes she thinks she hates what she has become. Her black high collared shirt makes her feel claustrophobic in her own skin, and as she runs her fingers over her arm guards, the loneliness floods into her system automatically. Buts she's tired, worn out and soaked and weary, and she just wants it all to be quiet again.

Kakashi sits behind his desk, charcoal eyes lazily roaming over the mission reports that have been piling on his worktop for weeks. She fingers the tips of her hair.

"I think I need a haircut," she traces the side of the kunia absentmindedly, but it brings an onslaught of memories coloured in purple light and surrounded by darkness that dares one to cross over. Nostalgia, she thinks, retiring the senbons back in her nin pack, is a sad thing to behold. Still, it's a considerable option. She'd done it before, once.

Kakashi gives her a fleeting look, those scarecrow eyes moving leisurely at their own slow pace. She bites the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from saying further; silence always made her feel edgy. Caged.

And that's when she feels it. Something cold mixed with electricity, a splash of crackling darkness, almost overflowing, oozing power. She feels it in her chest, a tightness she can't explain, like someone had reached a hand inside and grabbed a hold of her heart, decaying nails digging in; it hurts. It shouldn't. She knows it shouldn't.

* * *

They land silently, their feet barely touching the ground they're trudging through. The walls feel smaller somehow, now that he knows how to jump over them. Up ahead, the hokage tower lays awake among a city bathed in silence, a beacon to lost souls and all the village sought to represent.

The door is open for them as they reach the third floor. Inside stand the foundations of his past and all the memories he wishes to sometimes forget.

She's the first one he notices, and it's something he thinks he's driven by instinct and not habit. Always so bright, now she stands straight, green eyes half lidded and glowing under the light of the moon- they look feral, almost catlike. The anbu tattoo on her arm is scorning, swirls of black ink on alabaster skin. She's progressed without him to back her up, he comes to realise, but it shouldn't leave a bad taste in his mouth.

Kakashi smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners as they always do, like as if he knows a joke no one is privy to. Maybe he caught him staring.

"Nice to see you again, Sasuke."

* * *

She begins to wonder how they all ended up here, submerged in all the secrets that choke the air out of their lungs and binds them, body and soul. Politics is an ugly game, and they've always somehow been in the middle of it, thinking they could rewrite their fate, hoping to mold their future into something better. Brighter.

His team stands behind him, arms still and muscles tight. No one moves to remove their cloaks. She lets her eyes roam to the orange haired giant at the very back who stands blocking the door. Something about him irks her senses, and the muscles around her eyes go stiff as she realizes what.

His biology is all wrong, his hormones out of balance, a ticking time bomb in bronze skin, waiting to explode. The cursed seal peaks at her from under the collar of his shirt, three black commas inked on a cable knot neck which is thicker than her fists, taunting her. She slowly reaches for her holster, gaze trained on the man who almost reaches the ceiling with his intimidating height, eyes narrowing an inch.

"At ease, Sakura," Kakashi doesn't need to look back at her to know, and she stiffens for the tiniest moment where her thoughts run wild and the shinobi within her screams to arm herself lest she wants to die here before-

Loosening her fists, she straightens her spine, and folds her arm behind her back. She can feel Sasuke's eyes on her, scrutinizing and hardly curious, perhaps slightly mocking. Maybe he still perceives her as the little girl he abandoned so many years ago who could hardly hold her tear ducts in hold.

The thought makes her angry before she can tell herself to stop caring. Meeting his gaze, she holds it, unflinching, and feels a sliver of satisfaction at the fact that he's the first to look away.

"I've covered Rain. He hasn't been there."

They'd expected as much, but still, that doesn't stop the helplessness that slams into her. Chewing on her lips, she turns her back and stares out the window, frustrated- a dark city looks back at her, drugged in sleep induced haziness and opacity. It takes her a moment to notice how wet her eyes have become and she mentally screams at the tears to seep back to where they came from. Not that they listen to her anyway.

The chair creaks as Kakashi leans back and massages his forehead with his fingers. Already he can feel the beginning of a massive headache developing, one which will fry his nerves and make him want to gauge his own eyes out. But that doesn't compare to the worry that settles in the pits of his stomach, heavy as lead and just as poisonous; it has been three weeks since the last messenger bird came in, three weeks since the world last heard from the ninth squad before they vanished off the surface of the world, leaving no trace, like as of they'd been whisked off by a ghost ferry that came sweeping in and made a mad dash with the bodies. The thought could have been amusing if he had any other explanation.

"We'll discuss this later in the morning," Kakashi says, his voice gruff with fatigue.

Taking her mask from the mahogany desk that is littered with scrolls and maps, Sakura nods in his direction and aims the keys for Sasuke's face. He catches them with ease.

"You know where to go," the porcelain mask reminds her of animal spirits and millennium long lives spent in cages. She feels like as if she can't breathe in the same air as him anymore, and it hurts her to realise that she might never be able to again, even if for Naruto. Their history sickens her, all those bad decisions, one after the other, all that bad blood, on her hands, crimson and sticky even after half a decade for distance.

She jumps out from the window, pink hair spiking in her wake, a silhouette against the moon, and lands on her feet without making a sound. Under the animal mask, her tears defy her and fall.

Her apartment is dark when she enters. She moves past the living room and places her mask on the kitchen counter, its white surface gleaming under the light of the moon. The silence echoes around her, desolate, lonely. She rubs the heel of her palms against her wet eyes till her cheeks burn and everything she sees is a watery blur.

It takes her a while to stop and drag her feet to bed.

* * *

Sasuke watches them unpack. Specks of dust dance under the light of the moon; tiny particles trapped in motion, drifting through air in endless somersaults. They remind him of sandy spindles and abandoned water wheels in the valleys of the northern mountains.

Karin drags her bag to one of the room and slams the door, its sound reverberating in the previously empty apartment- his apartment, where he'd spent years grinding himself to be better, stronger, faster, feels strange to his senses, and maybe it felt the same way about him too.

He wouldn't expect it not to.

* * *

Walking over roofs, she glances at the city below. Her feet are silent when she moves, barely making a creak over the ceramic tiles and wooden sheets that fall on extended beams and posts that reach out of the earth like blackened digits, a mass of dark metal on white ground; it all reminds her of team 7, of wind swept hair inky black like the starless sky on a thundering night, standing stark on alabaster skin over marble features; of bones set in stone and spiked blonde hair a halo charged by the sun's light. They were both reflections of the other, two souls on both sides of the mirror.

Her nails chip on her metal arm guards as she probes her mind to find where she was meant to fit in; between an angry vigilante, a hyperactive ball of fire and the white flash, there was no space for her to expand, to breathe. They were choking her all on their own, and they never even knew.

With a rueful smile twisted on her lips, she crouches down to the centre beam and traces her fingers on the words etched in wood and burns them to her skin.

From her position on the street Ino frowns up at her, feet digging into dirt that fans her eyes and hair. Sakura pulls her mask and teleports herself out of there.

* * *

"Sakura."

She stops, feet planted firmly on the wooden floor, black sandals gleaming in the anemic morning light that penetrates through the blinds like bars of dull gold. Looking over her shoulder, she blinks up at him.

"Sasuke," her voice is curious, eyes narrowed around the corners where her lashes converge and point upwards in a mesh of pink and black tangles; they remind him of the cats that used to haunt the streets of the Uchiha district in the past.

He frowns as the memories flood back into him and forces himself to focus on the green pigment of her eyes.

"Your team isn't with you," she makes the motion of looking at the hallway behind him before twirling on her feet. "This way."

Sasuke stares at her retreating back, at the tell-tale white vest and black pants and wonders if he should be relieved or concerned.

Releasing a silent breath, he walks behind her to the large window on the second floor of the Hokage tower and follows her out of it as she leaps over roof tops like a panther, her movements oiled slick and smooth. Her fingers slide over the surface of the supporting beam in a haze of pale skin and blue light, and he has to stop himself from bringing the crimson to his eyes to confirm that's she's not just another ghost drifting through the crowds.

They move through the city to his apartment. She takes the keys out her pockets and leads them inside, roving her eyes across the pale walls and empty bed in reverie, like as if she's stuck some place no one else can go.

He activates his bloodline.

A minute passes. The sound of her barely-there breaths keep him grounded.

"Nothing."

She jerks a nod at him, pressing her lips in a thin line as her eyes narrow. Sasuke looks away.

There's something peculiar about the silence that floods the space around them like oxygen, and as she moves to open the window, Sasuke feels something choking his windpipe- he feels like a trespasser in this tomb, and the walls seem to want him out and away. Not that he doesn't share the same sentiment.

"Kiba and Akamaru have swept this place more than a dozen times probably," her voice wafts over to him, a whisper above the sound of the busting city below them, "but I just-" She breaks off, lips pulled into her mouth and between her teeth in a struggle. He stares at her.

"I just wanted to be sure they hadn't missed anything." A resigned exhale, and she's up again, her face carefully crafted to indifference, a mask under her real mask; it makes him angry. Lips pulled down to a frown, so close to falling off to oblivion, he just wants to leave again, and never come back. Not if he can help it. But there are things to sort, and promises to keep, and Sasuke thinks he owes them that much.

"We'll find him," he doesn't know why he says it, or says anything at all, and he knows that it's the same thing she's wondering now as she stands, with her back to him and the past they once shared. But she just blinks at him over her shoulder and he finds it increasingly irritating and wishes he hadn't opened his mouth at all.

A second passes. His fingers itch to fist themselves into the dirt of his destroyed home.

Sakura hums. He tries to hold in a groan and pinches the bridge of his nose instead.

At the hokage tower, Kakashi waits for his students to come back to him again.

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**Reviews are essential.**


	2. 2

**I'll be pursuing this for while before i get writing another chapter of _Home._**

**So, fingers crossed.**

* * *

**2**

They opt to move through the crowd on the way back.

Sakura weaves her way through the throngs of shinobi and civilian alike, pink hair sashaying in her wake, left to right to left again, like a pendulum. White vest gleaming under the sunlight, she looks like as if she's floating in air while the rest of them walk with their feet planted on the ground. They seem to note it too, because people pause to glance at her from the corners of their eyes before moving again, their gaze cautious, a too little weary to be casual. Titling his head, Sasuke finds it insanely peculiar.

Sticking to the shadows of the tall buildings that loom on either sides of him, he wafts along the gold crusted path like a shadow and focuses on the dust that his feet kick up after every beat, head down and eyes narrowed under the inhuman glare of the sun. Till they stop.

"Hinata," Sakura breathes out, a little hitch in her otherwise smooth voice, a ripple in the silk.

Sasuke glances at the Hyuga girl before looking towards the village walls.

"How are you?" He can imagine her shifting her head to the side as she said so, eyes softening to a vivid emerald like they always did whenever she took the task of placating a client on their missions during the genin days.

_Don't_, he warns the whispered memories in his head and looks back to the two women who stand white among a sea of browns and reds.

Hinata swallows, eyes watering in despair.

"I-I don-" she stutters, lips quivering and fingers trembling in the middle of the city, ebony hair dark like strands born of oil spills and Sasuke has the insatiable urge to leave again and never look back. The air around him feels suffocating, caging him with her desperation. Especially when she diverts her attention to him.

"Sasuke-san, I beg of you please-please bring him bac-back," her voice breaks down to a body shaking sob, eyes sealing shut as the tears burst out like water through a reservoir ruptured.

He finds himself at a loss for words, more so when Sakura glances up at him through her lashes before moving to console the other girl; it makes him feel like as if he's trapped with nowhere to go, and an angry part of him that is still bitter over everything that this village has done to him berates him for even thinking of coming back. He could have searched the continent without touching Konoha's borders, without ever breathing in the air that had destroyed his past and shattered his future and taken everything from him. So why hadn't he?

Looking down at Sakura again, he thinks he doesn't want to know.

* * *

The Hokage tower is bathed in shadows when they enter, all the blinds pulled shut to keep the heat out. The air is quiet, so quiet that Sasuke thinks maybe if he squints hard enough, he would see the ghosts of future past wandering the halls like lost souls, their hearts ripped in out of their chests and beating in their hands, their words circling like a halo out of their mouths like moth smok-

He blinks, rubbing the sand out of his eyes. The hallucinations disappear like dust and all that's left is them and the constant hum of the air conditioner in the back ground.

Sometimes when Sasuke is alone, he sees his brother. Hears him, even. And sometimes when it's dark and there's no one around for miles, he feels Itachi's fingers twisting inside his sockets and pulling his eyes out, past nerves and tissues, two white globes covered in blood and fluids. The pain is always too excruciating, too real to be just a replica of a dream, a nightmare gone rabid. Some nights Sasuke wants to slit his wrists just so he can have something else to focus on, something to ground him and make him remember that Itachi is dead and buried six feet under and the dead can't reach out past their graves to torture the living.

Looking into the dust-specked hallways, he feels disconnected, feels the world disconnected, like as if the globe had titled off axis and toppled everything with it. Even two years after they had brought an end to the infinite tsukuyomi, it still seems too surreal to be existing in a world where conflict is hushed under hearths, where smiles are lies and the eyes speak a different story all together. Because Sasuke has seen the aftermath in ghettos, seen children born out of graveyards and ragged battlefields, where every scream is a constant echo and the words don't seem to exist. Sasuke has felt the darkness consume him and felt the morning light penetrate past skeletons of wars and seep into skin. He has breathed fire and lived with soot in his lungs and hatred in his heart and burned under the steady flame of vengeance and now he's just an after-image, a mirage, some washed out form watching himself from the other side of the mirror.

And most of all, he is tired of carrying this debt he owes. So he patiently walks down the hallways of a home long forgotten and streets better left unused and settles to pay his last due so he can close his eyes and drift in peace.

The infant world, a phoenix rising from the ashes in the aftermath of the war, needed people like Naruto to tether it, to keep it together. And he was going to save him even if it cost him his remaining arm.

* * *

Sakura doesn't say anything as she walks besides him. Her silence unnerves him, the constant way she barricades herself within the confines of her mind, so utterly unshakled. Like a ghost roaming the halls of an abandoned past. Their past, the one they so carelessly destructed.

A selfish part of him wants her to smile again, just so he can delude himself into thinking that the past years were nothing but a shallow dream. The other part reminds him of his hypocrisy and shuns him into silence.

They stand by the edge of Kakashi's office. Sakura seems to contemplate something for a moment before she knocks and enters, leaving the door ajar for him to follow. He catches it from swinging back shut and goes in.

The desk is as they had left it last night- clattered with scrolls and maps and paperwork. Sasuke watches her silently group the things together to give it a look of futile organization. He's tempted to pull her hands and make her stop and realize that her actions don't fool anyone; her trembling hands give everything away.

But he doesn't.

Kakashi and he watch her shuffle papers in silence. The air conditioner hums noisily in the background.

* * *

"Alright then," Kakashi rubs his hands. The map of the continent glistens in the anemic morning light, the multicolored thumb-pins casting long, ominous shadows over the paper like a bad omen. A very bad omen. Sakura would know; there was nothing left to search.

But she continues to hold herself to the withering hope that clenches her heart and chokes her lungs and stifles the bile that rises in her throat.

Kakashi looks almost forlorn as he stares at the cluster of pins. They predominate almost every inch of the fire country, tangled with the red strings that show every route taken, every path, every clearing, every town- there was nothing but the oceans left to scout.

"We have the Kazekage and his men keeping an eye on the deserts. Cloud is accounted for. So is Kiri. And now, Rain. That leaves Sound, and Grass country." Moving across the board, he continues, "These islands are currently under Ibiki's watch. His brother in the Tea Country has people keeping a watch on the ports-"

A subtle desperation, borne from a peculiar familiarity with the unknown. The dead do not rise from their grave. Sasuke feels the air shift, like a ghost gaining volume. Slender fingers fist of a knot, and pink hair fade to nothingness in the darkness, ripples in a pond. She glances at him from the corner of her eyes, asking (_why did you have to go why didn't you come back why didn't you stay_). His silence answers back. She doesn't ask again. He blocks her from inside his mind and she stands guard outside his skull, tentative cat eyes and muddy pupils wide. With bottle green irises that pull you in like a snake.

"Sound," he hears himself say. Kakashi stop his briefing and turns back. Sakura stares at him with her bottle green viper eyes. "My team and I will go. Tomorrow."

No one says a word. Then: "I think tha-"

"I'll go with you," Sakura announces. Her eyes are solid, relentless. Sasuke feels the anxiety taking hold like an audible snap of broken bones and ripped tendons.

He doesn't want her come. He doesn't want to be the one to tell her that either.

Maybe she understands that. Maybe she hears it in the way his muscles stiffen and the air begs to be taken inside his lungs again. Maybe she's still as angry at him as he is with himself. Maybe that's why she raises her chin and challenges him to disagree, knowing in her mind that he wouldn't, fearing in her marrow that he would.

Kakashi glances in the air between them, at the static that flows from their fingertips. The multi-coloured thumb pins mock his indecision.

"Fine," he relents, falling back into his seat, waving his hand. "Both of you can go."

Sakura doesn't grin in satisfaction or show that she's happy. Instead, she steels her gaze and breathes through her nose and let's those wide brim eyes hold him in place.

"Tomorrow then." There's nothing but determination in her voice. Nothing that reminds him of the girl he left behind on a dusty bench six years ago, her hands curled by her face, pink hair pooling around her chin.

Sasuke closes his eyes. The nerves pull tight behind his corneas and burn the image of her sadness in the shutters and corners of his mind. An endless charade of hypocrisy.

"Tomorrow," he says.

* * *

Suigetsu chews on his straw, canines piercing through thin plastic.

"So, we're going back there, huh?"

Sasuke looks out the window, down at a bustling Konoha. The streets are lit bright with paper lanterns and little glow-lights, paving the way to the stars. He remembers running down those cobble stone lanes, the smell of summer and festivity wafting in the air, the air clamored with sounds of laughter and love, a million wooden shoes striking down in unison. He remembers chasing fireflies in glass jars and ruffling kitten fur. He remembers the life he lost twelve years ago.

"We know the topography. It only makes sense that they would send us there," Karin says. Her firecracker eyes burn in the bleeding sunset.

They wait for him to say something. Sasuke pushes his apprehension down his throats. "We'll have an extra member travelling with us."

Suigetsu raises a pale eyebrow. "Who?"

"An old teammate," he tests the word on his mouth. Teammate. They haven't been teammates for six years now.

Juugo sees him grimace but doesn't say anything. Suigetsu rolls his tongue along his gums, a finger tapping the side of his jaw. Then he grins. "Well, that should be interesting."

Sasuke's grimace deepens. _ Interesting_. That's one way of thinking about it, he supposes.

Outside, the sun recedes past the horizon, birthing a million constellations to take its place in the indigo sky. The hokage mountain comes to life, burning under the light of a dozen flood lights. The angular features throw daunting shadows, alluding to the darker side everyone chose to overlook in collective ignorance. Sasuke stares into the darkness of Konoha and blinks.

They have less than seven hours to get their things together for the mission. Sasuke tries to imagine how much time they can allow themselves to this witch hunt and comes out blank. The anxiety rises in his chest, inundating his veins with the graveness that pulls him down and forces him to peer six feet under his skin, drowning in the desperation, struggling to hold.

He wonders if this is how they all felt when he left all those years ago.

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**Let me know what you guys think. Cheers!**


	3. 3

**Missing the days when taking out time to write wasn't so difficult.**

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**3.**

Sakura remembers the bleeding moon.

She remembers the echo of silence in her chest and the heat radiating from dead corpse and rotting skin, boiling to rot and sinew, a history of the world never forgotten. She remembers the desperate need in her fingers to clench her grubby hands into ribcages and lungs just to feel something pulsating, to feel that trickle of life, the substance of all existence, so she could kick start her own heart again.

There had been blood down to the inside of her cuticles, a red that refused to let go. And no matter how much she washed or how hard she scrubbed, it was always there, taunting. A relic of her worthlessness.

She feels the shame in her marrow, feels the insignificance of her being- a truth not even her countless tales of heroism can snub out. She knows she's replaceable; she might not have been, once, but the war had drained the potential and the will to succeed and now she just wants to survive one day at a time till she has the courage to pave her own way out. So when she looks at the sun, at the silent misery that shines from Hinata's lashes and wafts from her hair, she grits her teeth and lets the nail dig inside her veins and spew promises she has no way of keeping. Because people like Naruto don't deserve to blow out so fast so soon. The world need people like Naruto, and Sasuke.

What the world doesn't need is another placid, wilted half- earned girl. The world doesn't need someone like her.

So she steals her nerves and lies through her teeth. "I'll get him back," her voice echoes in her won eardrums.

"I'll get him back if that's the last thing I do."

* * *

Standing before the mirror, she clips the scissors and pulls up the bulk of her hair on top of her head and seals her eyes shut. The strands fall like glittering raindrops, like bodies on a battlefield, riddled with bones and dying screams, and when she's done, she's left with a jagged cut. The ends are uneven, choppy. They fall just below her chin, pink hair swinging no more.

Asymmetrical. Like the crooked scar on her stomach and an identical one on her heart. The night is silent, and Sakura blinks with eyes pulled wide, lashes convolving and parting slowly, like as if she's waking from a dream. Then she stares at her reflection and sighs.

_So much for that._

Twirling the scissors in her hand, she leaps from her balcony and climbs over roof tops, all the while wondering _whywhywhywhy._

It makes the bitterness creep up her throat. Something tinkles in the back of her skull, pulsing. Aching. Her pink hair tickle her ears.

When she knocks on Ino's balcony, the night is dead. Sakura closes her eyes and leans back on the leaning, her feet hovering over the tiled floor, hands clutched for dear life. The hokage monument stares back at her, inquisitive, daunting. The pupil-less eyes stare down at her from over granite noses. They tell her to go back home. She turns her face away, lips pulled in her mouth- she doesn't know where her home is anymore.

Ino takes one look at her horrible haircut and sigh, exasperated, but still amused. Sakura shrugs, one corner of her lips tilting upward, a non-committal move, a "what can I say" ordeal. They stand in her brightly lit bathroom, Sakura face front to the mirror, Ino hovering behind her. She clips the loose ends silently, working with the crafty diligence of a master artisan, her hands trained to be steady and precise. All Sakura can do is stare at their reflections.

When they're done, Sakura fingers the strands closest to her face and twirls them. The hair are longer to her right, parted on her temple. When she rubs her neck, she can feel the sharp ends of her undercut. Ino dusts the mess into a corner of her bathroom and smiles at her. Sakura smiles back. "Sasuke's back."

Ino stops. The jerk in her movement is immediate. Then she says, "Okay."

"Yeah." Then, Sakura says. "I'm going with his team. We're going to look for Naruto in Sound."

Her best friend, her better half, she simply blinks. "Okay."

"Yeah," Sakura replies awkwardly, hands wringing in the hem of her shirt.

The silence is palpable, suffocating.

"I'm not in love with him anymore," she blurts out, then blinks, surprised. Ino gives her a sad look. "I'm not," Sakura reiterates again. "I don't know what it means to be in love. I thought I did, but I don't. Not really."

"Okay." Ino gives her a small smile. Sakura feels a lump growing in her throat, clogging her breath, killing off her oxygen supply. Smiling weakly, she swings the scissors in her hands and looks out again. The pity in Ino's eyes haunt her.

"Come back safe," Ino suddenly says. Her back is rigid, shoulders stiff, eyes red solid. The look of someone who has lost too much too fast too early. Sakura thinks of Asuma and Inoichi and grins, lips straining on the corners, so fickle. "You're not getting rid of me this easy."

Ino tries to hold the humor against her but ends up laughing, her chewed fingernails rubbing the moisture from her lids. Looking at them, Sakura finds space in her throat to swallow down and clamps on the dread that rises in her heart. Outside, day breaks with the silent spill of colors, blinding the horizon, drenching the sky in hues of crimson and canary-yellow. Steeling her heart, she jumps into the light and forces herself to keep her head straight.

Basking in the muted lights, she's reminded of the war again. Even now, Konoha seeps into sleep with the heavy toll on its frame of mind and wake up to the same guilt every day, selfishly looking past the cracks on its foundation, foolishly deluding itself of a better future. A brighter future.

She wonders if they can afford to hope, not with cemeteries that are packed with young graves. Stone after stone is decked with names, dates and memoirs, a desperate attempt to hold on to the sacrifices of those who weren't lucky enough to make it past the destruction and enter the dystopia that was barely managing to hold itself together. The era of peace, they call it. It makes her grimace. And angry.

Man is a creature of destruction, and when it is unsatisfied with tormenting others, it turns on itself, tearing off its own limbs, blasting its existence. That is what had happened to them, over and over again. Shinobi history at its finest.

A part of her wonders if she'll ever be able to move past the shadows that haunt her every time she blinks. Like Neji's. Like every other person she knew died that day, people she could have saved if she had been faster, stronger. More competent. The diamond on her forehead almost mocks her- she knows where her reserves stand, and where they had stood that day on the battlefield when she had sweat running down her skin and a heart malfunctioning under her fingertips. He had been so close to death that day, so close to being gone forever. They both had. But she could only save one and in her mental state of absolute disarray, she had picked him.

She chose Naruto. And she knew she would choose him all over again if she had to. She would save him even if it meant people dying. Even if it meant that she couldn't save Sasuke.

Some days she closes her eyes and sees them lying there, eyes a hollow space in their faces, hands unfurled and limp. One dying, the other dead. Probably. She doesn't know; she never checked for a pulse. It had been a flurry of jumbled nerves and careless chakra spilling through the seams, dripping from her fingers and her heart, a trickle of brine on the walls of an underground cave. She doesn't know how Sasuke survived that, or why her mind drew to a standstill at the glowing black crescent on his palm-

Or maybe she does. Maybe she was afraid that the dark chakra would swallow him again and he'd kill them all in a heartbeat. That he'd draw his katana and she'd watch him plunge it through her chest with a slow motion of his wrists and she'd close her eyes without having to wonder why she felt so damn guilty for not killing him under the Iron bridge and for even trying to kill him in the first place. He would kill her and she'd be free of her charges and her ruminations and her faults and nobody would need to rely on her anymore. Maybe she would've even thanked him and drawn comfort from the last disconnected look he would've given her before falling to the ground, her own veins drying out faster than Naruto's. Maybe she would've been happy, just a teeny tiny bit, that she wouldn't have to shoulder all their burden anymore.

The shame linked with those memories make her want to disappear, to hide away- from Kakashi's all knowing look, from Hinata's silent skepticism. So she drowns in the guilt and forces herself to look at herself with her mask on and grins from underneath the plaster, her skin itching raw.

Holding herself prisoner, she seeks her redemption.

* * *

Sasuke looks at the rising sun. It reflects off the village walls and cuts over housing complexes and administration buildings, chasing shadows from the darkest corners, from the nooks and crannies that no one stumbled into anymore.

He wonders if Naruto slipped into one and forgot how to come back out.

Sakura walk to the gate, her mask dangling by the corner of her bag. The sharp edges of her newly cut hair punch him into silence, so much that he finds it hard to look at her.

(_Iloveyouwithallmyheartpleasedon'tleavepleasetakemewithyoupleasepleaseplea-_)

He draws a sharp breath and stares into the last bit of shadows that fade under her sandal-clasped feet.

Suigetsu looks between them and bursts into laughter. "Princess Bubble-gum, I didn't know you were the old teammate."

He sees her grimace at the name. Then he sees the last word dawn in her mind and the confusion that brims her eyes when she looks at him.

"This should be like old times for you two."

Sasuke flinches. _The old times_. Chasing cats and weeding training grounds. Hating, fuming, anticipating. His body moving on its own accord to save them both. Watching his hands nearly kill them both. Losing himself inside the swirling darkness, bleeding in the night. Fixing bridges. Burning the ones that mattered the most. Drowning under the outrage and the fear. Slashing his own flesh. Saving Sakura. Watching her watching him. Hoping, deluding, dreaming. Making the wrong choices, over and over again.

He isn't the person he was when he was twelve, so blind in his rage, and neither is she. He knows that now. Nothing was ever going to be like _the old times _anymore.

The old Sakura would've said something by now. The new Sakura simply stands there awkwardly and lets the silence drag itself on. It makes him miss the old one. Then he remembers that he killed her with his own bare hands, piece by piece, and clamps down on that thought.

Watching Kakashi emerge from the cobble-stone pathway is a relief. The sun gleams behind him, illuminating his silhouette. He looks like a dark apparition, masked, brooding. Seeing him without his official office garb makes Sasuke realize how tired he looks. Still, there's a lightness to his form, a fleeting sense of objectivity that looks beyond the present and peers into the future. Except this time, he can't.

"A report, everyday, " he tells Sakura, placing a scroll in her hands. "I miss one and I'll be tracking your footsteps with the hounds myself."

She smiles a bittersweet smile and accepts. Kakashi almost reaches out and ruffles her hair but stops himself short. He blinks at the pink crown, at the clear absence of hair that should have flown to her waist and curled at the edges. Hair that brightened his office on even the dreariest of days.

Sending Sasuke an accusatory glance is almost a reflex. An old habit he can't quite shake off, an itch that ends in a flurry of twisted muscles and snapped tendons. Sasuke stiffens.

But Kakashi reigns his bias and hands him a scroll too. "In case you need official jurisdiction."

It almost sounds like a bail from arrest in Sasuke's ears. He jerks a nod and seals it with the rest of his weapons. Karin looks at him from over her horn-rimmed glasses but he ignores her. Sakura fingers her anbu mask and closes her eyes

Then they walk out of the village. Kakashi watches them till they disappear into the forest and rubs his aching eye.

* * *

**I'd love to hear any inferences you guys draw from this. **

**Do pop a review. It helps me write better.**


	4. 4

**An update in under three months. I feel so proud of myself.**

* * *

**4.**

It's almost an impulse, he thinks, to glance at her. Like a tick he can't get rid of, a glitch in his marrow. _Watch her, _it says. _Keep her safe._ A strange voice, speaking of stranger things. He worries that he might fail no matter how hard he tries, that he'd take the fall for her in a heartbeat and somehow she'd be the one crash landing off the shore before him.

It's an odd thing, worrying, ruminating. It drives home the final nail in his coffin, the sledgehammer to his jaw. He's constantly looking to make sure that she's there running with him, jumping past sturdy tree trunks and bird nests. She glances at him from the corner of her eyes where her lashes converge in a mesh of lilac spider webs, for a moment, just a split of a second, so quiet that its daunting. He sees the fortress rising in the apple green irises, sees the walls blocking him out.

He looks away first. Sakura jumps past him in a rush of fragrant air. Sasuke sighs and flexes his hand. The forest echoes around them.

They trek the ground, pushing past thick shrubs and grass. The foliage smears on the sole of their shoes, the wet earth green under their feet. Small puddles materialize like pebbles in a stream, stagnant, unmoving. There is an opening in the canopy above them that lets flashes of sunlight through, and for a second, Sasuke feels like an ant under a spotlight. The dense air does nothing to cleanse his lungs, and a rogue hand pushed into his chest and takes hold of his heart, yellowing nails digging in. He can almost picture it. Yellow nails on brittle fingers stretched under pale skin. A sickly pale hand leading to a jutting elbow, following into the darkest of darkness. Red clouds, floating. A grin, canines on display. Dancing eyes, pupil-less, illuminated in the pitch black. The smell of blood and urine combined-

Karin stops in front of him. The vision shatters and he steps back, one hand over his pulsing eyes.

Something flutters past him, so close to his skin that it tingles in the aftermath. The stench of broken flesh follows. His sharingan spins wild.

"_MOVE_."

The fear thrums in his heart, reverberating in his ears. Eyes following the outline in the sky, Sasuke pushes them back into the tree-line, adrenaline pulsing in his body at a hundred times the speed. Sakura jumps back under a thick fringe of green leaves, hiding herself against the tree-trunk. Her mask lingers by the side of her bag, dangling. Sasuke crouches in front of her, shielding her head under his cloak. On the other side of the path, Suigetsu melts into a puddle, his sword dissolving into the ground with him.

The smell that follows is unbearable. He feels Sakura stiffen under his arm, her neck tense. His own tendons stretch taut, a vein pulsing on his forehead, and he clenches his teeth. Karin holds a hand against her nose and folds into Juugo's side, shielding her watering eyes.

For a moment the world is silent; for a moment, it seems like the globe has stopped rotating on its axis and sucked all sound into outer space. The air grows dense with every ticking second, weighing on his shoulders like a thick sludge of muck and sludge. The tree line sways.

Something shoots across the narrow sky like a bullet. Silhouetted against the clear sky, the dark figure convulses like a snake and glimmers, out of place, ripped from a dark fairytale, a relic of a post-apocalyptic world. Sasuke feels eyes probing at him from under the feathers of that creatures- he feels naked, all his scars out on display. His sharingan spins, cart wheeling into oblivion. The air grows denser still till it is impossible to breathe and he feels like his lungs will collapse on themselves. His calves shake, so close to giving up on him. The darkness creeps into the corners of his vision, slithering slowly, a languish crawl, taking its sweet time as he writhers.

Sakura fists her hand into the earth and blinks the tears out of her eyes. Holding onto Sasuke's shoulder, she flashes a small burst of chakra directly into his veins and jolts him out. Like the seal of a vacuum jar shattered, sound blares into his ears. Shadows dance in his mind.

"Track it," her voice rasps out, chalky, so low he barely catches it. Cutting across to Juugo's side, he grabs Karin's arm and sends a small electric shock to her heart. She jerks under his fingertips, eyes snapping open. "_Get a hold of its chakra_," Sasuke hisses into her ear. Sakura holds herself up by her forearms, struggling to stay. Sasuke holds her tighter into his side and clenches his jaw in frustration. The forest of death flickers behind his lids like a broken film, reminding him of a past he thought he had forgotten. The exploding snake. Orochimaru. The seal. Sakura holding both him and Naruto, dragging them to safety, hiding the quiver in her fingers under her legs. Sakura fighting to protect them, her busted lip, the swollen eye.

The frustration he had felt then slams into him. The nostalgia is lost to him- all he feels is the anger, the fear. His body shutting down on him against his will as his mind reels in agony, flickering in and out of consciousness like a heartbeat. In out, in out, a slow death. The darkness flickers in the periphery of his vision, taunting him, egging him on. His nails dig into his palm and cut the skin there, leaving half-moon shaped indents that bleed around the corners like a paper cut.

The smell that follows is pungent. It invades their nostrils and settles in the nooks of their lungs, stuck in the corners impossible to reach. Juugo glares at the sky through a narrow slit of his eyes, one hand over his mouth to prevent any sound from escaping, the other digging into the tree bark. The small splinters dig into his skin like a hundred tiny needles, sending jolts of pain into his temples like a slow pulse. Sakura's labored breaths cracks the silence of the forest. A thin sheen of perspiration glimmers on her pale forehead, slipping past the diamond above her eyebrows.

Then it stops and Sasuke feels the air rushing back into his lungs with the ferocity of a carnivore on a hunt. It hits him square in his chest. The air feels cold, antiseptic. He's reminded of hospitals and oxygen tanks and the stillness that inhabits its hallways. Karin coughs, rubbing her mouth with the back of her palm. There's a thin strip of blood mixed with phlegm left as a residue on the soft pads of her fingers.

"What the hell was that?" Suigetsu coughs out, materializing again from the puddle that had rippled a second ago. Water leaks from his nostrils, a steady stream of his lifeline flickering out a teardrop at a time.

Sakura pushed herself up and leans against the wet trunk, one hand pressed to her side. "I've never seen anything like that, not even in the war."

"Did you get it?" Sasuke asks Karin. She coughs again, folding herself in, and nods. Sasuke sighs.

Sakura leans down to her level and pushes her hand out of her way, "Let me have a look." Her voice is soft, gentle. The voice of a person who heals. Sasuke pinches the bridge of his nose and moves back.

"Juugo, find a suitable place to set up camp." Nobody mentions how there's still enough daylight to cover a large portion of the forest.

"What if birdie decides to make another round while we're asleep?" Suigetsu sends a suspicious look skyward, his hands clenching around the hilt of his massive sword. There's a subtle tremor to his voice that trembles in his throat and travels down his spine.

Sasuke looks up at the sky, at the receding daylight that splashes the horizon with hues of indigo and scarlet and wonders what they would do if that creature did in fact decided to make a return trip while they were asleep. _Nothing_. The thought makes him grimace. _We would do nothing, because we'd be dead._

Sakura peeks at him from under her lashes, her one hand stable against Karin's shoulder. Like as if she can hear the words swimming in his mind before he has a chance to hide them. _Dead, _he thinks again. She looks away.

"I'll take first watch," is all he has to offer.

* * *

Sakura folds a washcloth in her hand and looks back to the lake. The moon ripples across the surface.

Karin pulls the zip of her shirt down to expose her pale skin. Even in the moonlight, Sakura can detect the faint marks on her shoulders and her chest, relics of an unforgettable past. It makes her undeniably sad, how the darkness of the world ripples across oceans and engulfs the most unsuspecting people in its grasps.

Karin smiles, a sardonic twist of her lips. "Ugly, isn't it?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of painful," Sakura admits. Karin laughs.

"Nobody thinks like that anymore."

"That's true." Then: "I never understood how scars could scare people." She traces her own across her belly, a diagonal beast of a thing, extending from the corner of her ribcage to her hipbone. The skin had healed but the mark remained. One of her firsts.

"Sit up please," Sakura instructs. Placing her hands on Karin's back, she starts to probe, searching through the niches and the blind-spots. Karin shivers lightly under her hands.

"Cold?"

She shakes her head. "I'll be fine."

After a moment of comfortable silence, Sakura asks, "How long has this been a problem?"

Karin shrugs. "The war, I guess." There is a terse setting to the air, the tinge of a memory not forgotten. Sakura stares at her back, at the many teeth marks and the scar that stands out just slightly, a simple ridge of uneven skin, and closes her eyes. There had been a time when all of them had been involved in something so much bigger, so much worse. The day on the Iron bridge had been a pivoting moment that had tested their resolves, hers especially. And she had failed miserably. In the end, she still couldn't summon the single-mindedness it took to plunge a weapon into his back.

But Sasuke had managed to strangle them both that day. He had simply reached out and wrapped his fingers around their necks and squeezed till he was satisfied.

"I should have been more careful that time," Sakura says, moving back. A shiver crawls the length of her spine. "I'm sorry. I should have healed your wound properly."

But there had been no time. Sasuke and Naruto were already tearing each others' limbs apart and she had to go one last time to finish what she had started.

"Don't apologize," Karin stares at her hands. "It's not your fault."

Then she laughs. "He missed my heart on purpose, that bastard." The sound is sad, cheerless. Her eyes reflect the torment of her emotions. Like ghosts in an abandon castle, they skirt the periphery of her face, exposing themselves in glimpses.

"He's not that bad, you know. He used to be angry, but now there's nothing left in him," Karin says. "He wasn't always so angry. I'm sure you know that more than I do."

_No, _Sakura thinks. _I don't think I do._ And that was true, wasn't it? The Sasuke she knew had existed in phases; he went from ambitious to monstrous to defector in a split of a nightmare. There wasn't a time when she had not seem him angry or calculating. He had existed with a single-mindedness that had often terrified her, and she had hid it so well till she felt she was coming apart at the seams. For her, Sasuke started as the boy who had lost his family in a series of uncertain circumstances and he turned into the boy who would forever hold her heart in his heart and crush it like glass. He had grown insane till his mind couldn't take it anymore and when he saw he couldn't reclaim his sanity, he left. After that, he never looked back.

Sometimes Sakura wonders whether she hates him simply because his irrationality that had seemed so bizarre at the time when they were thirteen had started to look rational as she grew. She wonders if she hates him simply because if it was left to her, she would have done the same, that if she was forced into his shoes, she would've bit the same apple that he did. And then, his irrationality that had haunted her mind for years didn't seem so irrational anymore; it was more rational than she could admit, more human. He had been betrayed, and he had responded accordingly. Not everyone operated with the same altruistic persistence that Naruto possessed- not everyone could love despite the hate thrown in their faces.

So Sakura thinks, _I don't know a Sasuke that isn't angry. He didn't exist._

"We should head back," Sakura says, a smile pulling the corners of her lips. Her plastic smile, the one that never fails her. Karin looks like she wants to ask something but doesn't and for that, Sakura is grateful. She doesn't know how she would answer anything.

The darkness echoes around her as she watches the lilac clad back move and then slowly disappear between the trees. When she sees that Karin is back with the other, Sakura crouches on her knees and hides her face in her folded arms. Her feet stretch against her black shoes. A second later, she feels something probing.

"How long were you there?" she asks, not lifting her face up. Sasuke steps into the clearing hesitantly. "Not long," he says. His response is so cryptic that it makes her smile miserably.

Sasuke blinks at her hunched form and unfurls his hands. There's an apology skimming the corner of his lips, one he can't push out. _I'm sorry, _he wants to say. _For everything._

He had said them, once, in the end. And she had shut him right up, her waterlines spilling. Her tears had been warm on his skin. He can still feel them there sometimes.

But he can't say them now. So he looks up at the moon that cradles the horizon in its mighty grasp, at the infinite expanse of inky darkness that engulfs everything within its reach and more and wishes for a moment of peace where he can breathe without the pain of a thousand needles sticking into his lungs for all the things that he has down over the years and all the pain he has caused with his bare hands.

He knows that it will start with her like he knows that everything with him had always started with her. She had occupied a part in his existence that he could never ignore, no matter how hard he tried. And now, when everything is threatening to slowly come apart again, he's looking at her for a consolation that it would be okay in the end. That they would be okay.

He leaves her by the bank, too conflicted to hold her. When she come back to where they have camped for the night, she pointedly looks at him square in the face till he knows for sure that she had heard all that he couldn't say. And just like back then, she doesn't want any of it.

"Wake me up when it's my turn," she says and then turns away from him.

Sasuke begins the first watch of the night with a fist lodged in his throat and a hand squeezing his lungs.

* * *

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